Protect You
by PizzatheGreat
Summary: Natsu saves Lucy once again and gets hurt in the process again but this time he nearly died and Lucy starts blaming herself. She starts to think about how weak she is and is determined to get stronger so that no one will have to get hurt because of her again. Oh and another dark guild is targeting Lucy again but this time she is not letting anyone protect her anymore.
1. Saved Once Again

**Lucy POV.**

"Natsu!" My voice echoed down the hall as a sword made of shadows pierced through my best friend's beaten body. Natsu fell on his knees in pain. I tried to get to him but I I couldn't move. All I could do was lie down on this cold floor watching my best friend trying to protect me.

"So this is all you Fairy Tail mages are made of?" The man laughed, "Who would have thought that the great Salamander would be dying on my feet." He kicked Natsu on the stomach.

"Who said I'm gonna die?" Natsu said while struggling to get back up on his feet again, "I was just getting fired up"

I wanted to tell him to stop. I didn't want him to protect me anymore. I didn't want him to get hurt anymore. "Iron Fist of the Fire Dragon! That's for insulting Fairy Tail!" The black clothed mage could barely stand after the series of attacks the fire dragon slayer had landed on him. "And this is for trying to hurt Lucy! Crimson Lotus: Exploding Flame Blade !"

"This is not the end of it dragon slayer! You will die soon enough!" A maniacal laugh covered the room as the man disappeared into the shadows.

"Oi Luce, are you okay?" Natsu approached me and was about to help me get up but something happened, he collapsed on the ground.

"Natsu! Natsu get up!" Tears started streaming down my face, Natsu just saved my life and here I was lying helplessly on the ground unable to even just assist him in getting back to the guild to get healed. A blue figure appeared out of nowhere followed by a flash of scarlet and raven.

"Lucy, what in the world happened in here ?!" Gray questioned. I wanted to answer him, to tell him what happened but for some reason the just didn't come out of my mouth.

"Never mind that we have to get Natsu healed immediately!" Erza said, "Happy get Natsu to the guild as fast as you can! Gray carry Lucy!"

I felt Gray's arms lifting my body while Happy flew off carrying Natsu back to the guild.

* * *

A few hours later in the guild…

"If Natsu got here a little later, he might not have….." Wendy's voice trailed off but we all got the message. If we were even a minute later, Natsu might have died. "His other injuries didn't really do much since his body is quite used to injuries like those, the only injury that caused him to be like this was the cut on his stomach. It seems to have been from a magical blade."

_The shadow sword…. _

"The blade seems to have left small traces of magic that continuously cause Natsu's body to weaken and cause him pain." Wendy continued. So when he was fighting that guy he was already going through so much pain. That idiot never really knows when to stop. "But don't worry about that now, with the help of Levy-san's knowledge we managed to get rid of those small traces of magic but Natsu-san still needs to rest up so he'll probably be unconscious at most for two days other than that he'll be fine now."

Tears continued to pour down my face. _I was the reason this happened._ A hand was placed on my shoulder. "Lucy, tell me what exactly happened when we were split up."

Wendy, Levy, Gray and Erza all looked at me expectantly. They all wanted to know how Natsu got into this condition. I wasn't sure if I could tell them, if I could bring myself to tell them how it was all my fault but they deserved to know. I sighed and started narrating the events that happened the day before.

"Well as you know me, Natsu, Erza, Gray and Happy went on a mission to catch some bandits, it was going pretty well until one of the bandits tried to escape and managed to lead us to their hideout. It turned out they were working for some dark guild. When we got to the hideout, I don't remember how but Natsu and I got split up from everyone else. We bumped into some members of the dark guild that the bandits were working for. Natsu fought three of them while I took care of another two. They were much stronger than we expected and soon enough things started to get difficult. I managed to beat one of the mages and I saw that Natsu had already knocked out another two."

"That's when one of the mages I was fighting started attacking me. He used shadow magic but for some reason his shadow magic felt different, it felt darker and stronger. I managed to hold my ground against at first with Loke on my side, but when Loke was already out of energy he was sent back to the spirit world. That was when things started to get complicated." I held my breath trying hard not to remember everything that happened. I didn't want to continue anymore yet I still did.

"The mage used a spell to paralyze me… I couldn't move or summon any magic power I had. The dark mage the summoned this sword made from shadows and was about to stab me, but that was when Natsu took that sword for me. Instead of me getting stabbed, Natsu was the one who got hurt. Of course, Natsu still fought that man even after getting stabbed and all that while I wasn't able to do anything at all… He saved me again. That's how he got that wound. The mage managed to escape into the shadows before Natsu collapsed and that was when Erza, Gray and Happy found us."

I finished telling them what happened and they all just looked at me with sad eyes. It was my entire fault, if only I was strong enough then Natsu wouldn't need to protect me anymore.

Not only Natsu but everyone else that was always trying to save me. If I were strong enough then I could protect them too... And they wouldn't need to get hurt anymore because of me.

_Don't worry Natsu next time, I'll be the one to protect you, I'll be the one to save you someday._

* * *

**Thank you for reading this fanfiction I wrote... I kinda had to rush this so I am deeply sorry for all the mistakes in spelling and grammar I hope you enjoyed it somehow and I probably won't be updating until next week.**

**And don't worry I have it all planned out and I still have three months of vacation left so hopefully I'll finish it by then...**

**I am open for comments/suggestions, ratings, flames, criticisms so feel free to review may it be good or bad. Thank you very much everyone :)**


	2. A Talk with my Spirits

It's been three days since Natsu had fully recovered from his injuries. Since then I believe the guild had gotten even rowdier than before. I didn't think it was possible either but the moment Natsu started standing up once again he immediately started a brawl in the guild. And for these past three days, fights had erupted within the guild almost every 10 minutes. Of course a certain fire dragon slayer and resident stripper were completely responsible for all these. Yes, everything was starting to go back to normal.

I turned to Erza who was sitting on the bar stool next to me silently eating her strawberry cake not giving a care about the brawl occurring around her. "Hey Erza, aren't you going to stop this, you know with Natsu who just recovered and the fact that we just finished the repairs on the guild yesterday?" I said.

Erza paused for a moment, before turning to me. _Why did I interrupt her in eating her strawberry cake, now she might punish me instead of them…_

Instead Erza looked at me and smiled. "Well so far they're not doing any real damage just yet, and Wendy did say that doing normal things would really help Natsu in his recovery, so I think that I would allow them to do as they please for now as long as they do not go to fa- "Of course Erza's sentence was interrupted by a flying bottle that managed to make its way towards her most precious strawberry cake.

Everybody in guild froze, and stopped what they were doing. The air was as heavy it was suffocating nobody dared to make a sound, except Mira who was humming while watching the scene unfold.

"Who did it?" Erza calmly asked while radiating an extremely deadly aura.

"HE DID IT!" Natsu and Gray yelled simultaneously breaking the silence. They were both shaking in fear, pointing at each other, trying not to look at the scarlet haired demon radiating an aura of death before them. They were so dead.

I will not describe to you what Erza Scarlet had done for I myself did not really understand what quite happened. But soon after my teammates "bonding session", Mira got Erza a a freshly baked strawberry cake once again while Natsu Dragneel had once again started a brawl in the guild.

I looked behind only to see Natsu grinning like an idiot waving Gray's boxers around. He looked great. He was back to normal. If you look at him right now, you would not even think that he was so close to death's door less than a week ago.

Images flashed back into my mind and for a moment I forgot how to breathe.

_Natsu… Blood… Shadows… Darkness… Death…Weak…Useless… Burden..._

_Breathe Lucy. Inhale. Exhale._

A comforting hand snapped me out of it. "It's okay Lucy… It's fine. He's fine." The lion spirit's calming voice whispered in my ear calming me down and reminding how to breathe. He's fine. I sighed in relief.

"Lucy, come on. They're waiting for you." Loke said. I checked the time and finished off my milk shake. I stood up from the barstool and started following Loke out the door.

"Lucy, leaving so early?" Mira said in a sweet tone, while she served drinks to my guild mates. So who's your date?" She whispered in my ear, her face plastered with a sweet smile hiding the mischievous matchmaking grin on her face.

"Eh, I'm not going on a date Mira, just you know going to have a bit of bonding with my spirits." I said while raising my hands defensively.

"Okay then, don't enjoy yourself too much." She winked at me before going back to the kitchen. I sighed. Sometimes Mira was scarier when she was matchmaking compared to when she's actually fighting.

Once we got out of the guild, Loke started speaking. "I've already managed to gather all of us, your spirits, for a meeting today, even though Aquarius tried to drown me several times before agreeing to cancel her date with Scorpio toight." I laughed a bit at what he said. "So what's so important that you need to talk to all of us anyway?"

"Well, actually it isn't really necessary to talk to all of you about this, I just wanted to tell all of you guys personally." I smiled at him before continuing. "So shall we go?"

Loke sighed at my not-very-clear answer and transported me to the spirit world.

* * *

The spirit world never failed to amaze me. Its beauty was just out of this world. Well considering that we really were out of the world I guess that's how it was supposed to be. The sky was filled with several dazzling planet-like orbs floating in the air. And I still couldn't stop staring at the place that seemingly stretches infinitely into the void.

I looked around me and all of my spirits gathered around me with Loke, Capricon, and Aquarius closer to me than everyone else. All of them ready to listen to what I had to say. "Hey guys, I know that calling you all here wasn't really necessary to what I had to say," With that I received a strong glare from Aquarius. "But I felt the need to tell you all personally."

Everybody in the room listened intently. "I want to get stronger...No. I'm going to get stronger." I said with conviction. "I don't want to stay weak anymore. I don't want to hold anyone back anymore including you guys. I- "

"Lucy! Don't you dare say you're weak!" I have never seen Loke this angry before. "You were never weak in the first place. And you've never held us back ever! A weak person would have never been able to save me when I was so close to Death's door! A weak person would have never been able to beat those countless enemies that would get in their way. A weak person wouldn't be strong enough to fight for the people they care about! Nobody here thinks you're weak so don't you ever say that!" The anger on Loke's face was replaced by pride and determination.

"A weak person would never be determined to get stronger."

"If you called us here to tell us you're weak then this would've been a waste of time." Aquarius said.

Everybody agreed with what Loke had just said. I couldn't do anything at the moment but smile at how much my spirits believed in me.

"Lucy, please continue with what you were saying. " Capricorn said.

"Okay then." I continued. "I want to get stronger to be able to protect my friends, and my comrades to. I also want to do it so that I can finally bring out the true strength of the celestial spirits and I want to ask you guys to help in this."

"So that's all you had to say." Aquarius said obviously pissed off. "I HAD TO CANCEL MY DATE BECAUSE OF THIS!" All the other spirits cheered as others were trying to hold Aquarius back.

"So Lucy, you're really serious about this. Training starts tomorrow morning 4 o'clock sharp." Loke said with a sadistic grin.

I gulped hoping I would survive what he had planned out for me.

* * *

Hey guys!

I am deeply sorry for taking too long to update. A lot of had happened since the last time I updated and I hope you will forgive me.

This chapter is actually a breather for the things to come... the calm before the storm type of thing.

I am open to criticisms and hope you enjoy it.


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